Odin Sphere - Development

Development

Odin Sphere was first announced three months before release by its publisher Atlus in a February 2007 issue of Japanese Weekly Famitsu Magazine magazine, with an English-language version confirmed the same month by the company's North American branch. Joystiq interviewed Atlus' project lead for Odin Sphere, Bill Alexander, who spoke about the localization process. Concerning the general localization philosophy, Alexander noted, "Early on, we were told by our parent company that the game had a Shakespearean feel to it. One of the things we wanted to do was maintain that feel". Technical hurdles which made the process more difficult included the fact that the Japanese and North American release dates were so close together, as well as issues with text layout and formatting. Alexander revealed, "Aside from fitting the text inside the word bubbles, which in Odin Sphere's case had to be individually resized, we also had to worry about word bubble placement on the screen and the timing of the messages".

After the release of the game, RPGFan interviewed George "Jouji" Kamitani, the president of Vanillaware about both Odin Sphere and another Vanillaware game, GrimGrimoire. Regarding the critical success of both titles, Kamitani commented, "In spite of the technological progress in the golden age of 3D, the evolution of 2D game graphics is stagnating. These two titles are about aiming to be at the forefront of this evolution". When asked about the possibility of a sequel or a new Princess Crown game, Kamitani responded, "The stories of Odin Sphere and Princess Crown are complete. Hence, I'm not thinking about a straight-forward sequel." Kamitani also provided artwork for the title, about which Alexander raved in a separate interview, "Mr. Kamitani has raised the bar so high you may not see a better looking game come out on the PS2".